Interviews

Interview – Rakesh Shetty

The head of Business Management Development at Vi Technology talks with Keith Bryant.

Your specialist subject is India. Could you please tell us about the market, how it is changing in relationship with what is happening with the government and the world economy in general?

There has been a slowdown last year in the rural manufacturing. What we are looking at is, in the next year or two, with changes in the policy, the “Make In India” campaign which is going on with the new Prime Minister, we are very positive and hopeful that things will shape up really well and the all-around manufacturing and electronics industries situation in India will grow.

We are very positive that a lot of local mobile manufacturer companies are planning to set-up facilities here in the coming year.

That is the general view I am hearing from the people that I talk to throughout the show. There is a lot of optimism, a lot of positivity.

We have been in the Indian market for a very long time and there has not been the growth – we cannot compare India to China. It is a different scale. There it is based mostly on volume, here it is high-mix, low-volume going on. We are very positive that a lot of local mobile manufacturer companies are planning to set-up facilities here in the coming year. This is all correlated to the policies of the new government.

I know what you are saying. I am a long time visitor to India. I have talked for many years about the potential of India and I am really happy to be here when it sounds like, from so many people, that the potential is going to start turning into reality over the next few years. Hopefully that is going to be good for your business and good for the country generally?

I have been in this industry for so long, looking at the Indian market for 20 years, I have been in the manufacturing sector, I have been in the electronics sector for more than 13 years now. In general we are very positive that, in the next coming years, we definitely see that things will grow. Grow is good in a small pace manner to take things forward. I think overall as an industry, all will be benefited.